Bungie: We had to break through Infinity Ward 'noise' for Activision news

by Justin McElroy on Apr 29th 2010 7:40PM

Though many have speculated that today's Bungie-Activision partnership announcement was timed to help distract from the ongoing exodus from Activision darling Infinity Ward, the Halo dev insists that wasn't the case. In fact, Bungie's Joseph Staten said the developer was more concerned with the effect the Infinity Ward news could have on Bungie's own announcement.

"Just speaking personally, it gave us a little bit of pause because we're so excited about this news and we knew we'd have to break through a lot of noise to get the message out there," Staten said in an interview with Joystiq today. "So, clearly that wasn't optimal."

Bungie community lead Brian Jarrard later insisted that the Infinity Ward situation wasn't addressed during the developer's meetings with Activision ... Really, guys? That didn't come up? Not even while you were waiting for your Bloomin' Onion or anything? Like, what did you talk about?

Tags: activision, bloomin-onion, bungie, bungivision, infinity-ward, Microsoft, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (55)

Dear Bungie,

Help our PR disaster ASAP.

See in hell...er...the company barbecue,
Activision

"Bungie community lead Brian Jarrard later insisted that the Infinity Ward situation wasn't addressed during the developer's meetings with Activision ... Really, guys? That didn't come up? Not even while you were waiting for your Bloomin' Onion or anything? Like, what did you talk about?"

"It's called you are the Booty-call to Activision, they just callin ya up cause of Infinity Ward."

Yeah.. I would guess a multi-million dollar deal like this just happens overnight.

I'm really sure Activsion and Bungie WONT have been talking about this behind closed doors for at least a year. No, no.. what will have happened is, all the IW stuff kicked off and Activision just picked up the phone, called Bungie, said;

"Hey, IW are hitting the bricks, why don't you come over?"

...then Bungie, I'm sure will have replied;

"Sure thing guize! We'll agree a 10 year contract for millions of dollars literally in about 4 days to bail you out of this IW mess!"

/sarcasm

Lets knock on the door and ask for Ronnie Real ehh?

This deal has likely been in the pipelines for AGES. Deals like this do not happen overnight as some form of damage control for crying out loud! How naive do you have to be to think Activision just called Bungie up and the next day entered into a 10 year contract?

...and then assume this is all in direct response to the IW fiasco?

I dislike Activision as much as the next gamer but c'mon!

So you guys are joining the Activision zombie army after all of this bad press has come out on how they really treat their development studios? Wow, things must be bad for the single IP development company...

The whole bungie/activision thing only makes sense. Both groups believe in milking a franchise long past sequel mediocrity. .It makes me sick to think that in 10 years people will still be creaming in their jeans about Halo 27 coming out. *PUKE*